The cash supply chain is manual, complex, has inherent risk issues, and is dispersed throughout a network of automatic teller machines (ATMs), cash handling facilities, banking centers, and cash recyclers. The costs of depositing, distributing, and managing cash across a major bank, as well as the amount of daily excess cash carried by such a bank, can be on the order of billions of dollars.
Today's client deposit process does not adequately allow clients to view the status of their deposit bag as it makes its way from the client site to the cash handling facility and potentially on to proof and bulk file. Proof and bulk file is the verification and storage of checks or other negotiable and non-negotiable instruments. Deposit bags are handled multiple times in the process, which increases potential errors, opportunity for theft, and complicates finding missing transactions. Pertinent pieces of deposit data are typically manually entered and reentered into front-end systems throughout the end-to-end process. This lack of visibility into the end-to-end deposit and cash servicing capabilities restricts the ability to offer clients useful services as well as a bank's opportunities to be a differentiator in the market place.
Typically, deposit bags arrive at a cash handling facility and the cash, checks, or other monetary packages are counted by hand, and then reconciled with a paper ledger provided by the armored carrier. The armored carrier must wait until the manual count of the deposit bags matches the paper ledger and all errors are reconciled. Only after the deposit bags are reconciled with the paper ledger, may the deposit bags be assigned to a teller for counting, inspection, and/or redistribution. Deposit bags are manually assigned to tellers and workflow is managed based upon a human manager making subjective decisions regarding a particular teller's workflow capacity. The teller must take each deposit bag to a teller station and manually enter the declared amounts of cash and negotiable instruments that are present in the deposit bag before the teller is allowed to begin verifying the cash. Once the teller verifies the cash, the cash is taken to a sorter room for sorting, and then it is strapped. Strapped physical cash is stored within the cash handling facility. This entire process is expensive, time-consuming, and prone to errors.
Only a particular group of authorized people are allowed to handle the cash within the cash handling facility. However, it is possible for unauthorized people gain access to the cash handling facility. Such breaches of security can lead to thefts and mishandling of the cash. The personnel that handle the cash are responsible for securing a custody transfer of the cash, which must be closely monitored. The present system is performed manually, which is inefficient and error prone.
Advancements in the art of cash handling facility management that would increase efficiency, decrease errors, and decrease costs would be welcomed.